Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan’s interior minister said
tough negotiations with the U.S. will pay off in a security
agreement letting American forces maintain a presence in his
country after most troops depart next year.

“The most important part is we want the highest level of
friendship and partnership and the longest friendship with the
U.S.,” Umer Daudzai said in an interview yesterday at his
office in Kabul. The agreement is taking time because “we
Afghans want to make sure that the details are such that all
Afghans subscribe to it, both my generation and the next
generation.”

Agreement on a limited U.S. presence to train Afghan forces
and fight terrorism has foundered in part over Afghanistan’s
demand that the U.S. commit to defending the South Asian nation
against external threats, a reference to insurgents backed by
neighboring Pakistan.

The U.S. “will be committed to help us overcome any
external threat, whether obvious and conventional or proxy and
unconventional,” said Daudzai, 56, who has served as President
Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff and as Afghanistan’s ambassador to
Pakistan and Iran.

At the same time, Afghanistan has resisted the American
demand that any remaining troops be exempt from local
prosecution. Failure to reach such a status-of-forces agreement
led President Barack Obama to pull the last U.S. troops out of
Iraq in 2011.

The on-and-off negotiations on an accord don’t “mean that
you may not sign it or we may not sign it,” Daudzai said. “My
instinct tells me it’ll be signed,” he said, without predicting
when.

Tentative Accord

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reached a tentative
agreement with Karzai last month over a draft text after talks
that lasted 10 hours more than was planned. Karzai has called
for a loya jirga, a national consultative assembly of tribal
elders, to meet this month to consider and approve the accord.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan,
has warned of “grave consequences” for the U.S. and its allies
if the agreement is signed.

Daudzai, who was a mujahedeen fighter against the Soviet
Union after its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, was named
interior minister in September.

In the interview in his office, near several embassy
compounds on a street blocked off from vehicles, Daudzai
discussed his long-term plans for the Afghan Local Police force,
which he oversees.

Insider Attacks

The local police, a community-based militia that’s being
trained by U.S. special forces, was set up in 2010 to provide
enforcement in areas where the national police force is weak.

Some Afghans have accused the militia of atrocities, and
some officers have been involved in insider attacks against U.S.
and allied forces. In September 2012, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization temporarily suspended training for the Afghan Local
Police after a spate of attacks.

Deaths of innocent civilians have stopped since he assumed
office, said Daudzai, who’s responsible for all police forces in
the country. “There are combined special-forces and police
operations every night, but we’ve streamlined our operations and
we’ve applied cautions to bring it down to zero,” he said.

The ministry is weighing a long-term strategy that foresees
the police “making a U-turn to its normal duty” as a law-enforcement agency rather than fighting an insurgency, Daudzai
said.

Phasing Out

The Afghan Local Police force has about 24,500 members
currently, according to an Afghan law enforcement official, who
asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to
discuss details.

Daudzai said the force strength will increase in 2014 and
2015, to guarantee safety during national elections next year
and then when a new government takes office. Starting in 2016,
the local force will be gradually reduced and will be phased out
by 2018, Daudzai said.

Many local officers will be absorbed into the Afghan
National Police, the primary law-enforcement agency, Daudzai
said. The rest may be let go to “become businessmen, or go back
to their village and become farmers.”

Top police officials have been disciplined to send a
message to the force that they’re not to support or work against
any candidate in the elections, Daudzai said.

Fair elections and a smooth transfer of power from Karzai
to a successor may determine the continued flow of international
aid to Afghanistan, which has been instrumental to its economy’s
growth at an average of 9 percent a year since 2001.

Daudzai said he’s also cracking down on corruption within
the police because “if this agency is clean, then we can
implement strategies and laws for fighting corruption” in other
agencies and ministries.

Progress in Afghanistan has been hampered by “the deeply
embedded nature of societal corruption,” the U.S. Defense
Department said in a July report, citing in particular the
Afghan military.